Viva Bastille Day

So last night I went out on a match date with a professor from a different discipline who works in a different city. He was a lot better looking than in the photos, quite nervous at first. I wasn't really in the mood but wanted to get my mind of C.F. and CA. Maybe I just got used to talking to him every day, to being able to meet him for a drink down by the beach, but now I find myself longing for him almost every minute of the day. Dependent behavior. I think that's what it is. If there are automatic thoughts there must also be automatic emotional responses to distress. And I'm in a lot of distress. I miss my father a lot. I'm dreaming about him, processing the last fifteen years, the last forty-seven.

At any rate. I don't exactly remember when or where it was that I decided I wanted to sleep with him...at the restaurant? the car? on the way to my house after he graciously offered to put my bike in his car and take me home? Is my bike here? Did I unlock it? I don't remember. I sort of remember telling him, "you should stay here," but not where or when I said that. I remember wanting him and having him in my bed last night. I remember him getting up at 5 to go to the airport, and I remember thinking, "what a fantastic body he has," and going downstairs to make him a cup of tea for the drive. I remember coming home and shouting up the stairs to B.N., "I'm back." I remember taking the tampon out and deciding I didn't need to tell him I was having my period because I'm 47 now and am no longer embarrassed about the natural processes of my body. I am hoping the rest of this evening will return to my memory soon.

I don't feel at all ashamed or guilty or stupid or dumb. I'm not punishing myself, as I used to do in the past when this sort of thing happened. I almost never feel sexual any more, and have spent so much time lately recoiling from men who desire me. It's just such an unusual thing to feel this kind of straightforward sexual desire that I'm glad I could have and enjoy it. He was, is, a perfectly nice person. I even felt a little sorry for him for having gone so long without sex. That is to say, some part of me was just being generous, while another part of me was just going for it. And I'm glad I did. In the kitchen, kissing me just before he left, he said, "You can still back out of this." "So can you," I said.

Now to go downstairs to find out about that bike. And to see about some breakfast for that son of mine, who would remain upstairs in his lair with the t.v. and his computer and his great-great-grandfather's zither all weekend if he could.

And, of course, to figure out what the hell I was doing and why. Or not.